ALIENS

English oral presentation

Oral presentation – “Controversial issues”

Be sure to include the following:

• Objective presentation of the topic

• Reason why it is a controversial issue

• Clear presentation of pros and cons / points in favour and against (visual cues can be
helpful and make your presentation more appealing)

• Your own point of view

Good morning, everyone. Today I will talk to you about a controversial issue, “The
existence, or not, of ALIENS”.

First of all, what exactly is an alien? Well, the word alien can have more than one
meaning. Alien is something belonging to a foreign country or something unfamiliar and
disturbing or distasteful. It can also be a hypothetical or fictional being from another
planet or a foreigner. But, today we will focus on extraterrestrial life, in other words, life
beyond the Earth.

People have different perspectives about the existence of life outside the Earth.

Do you think we’re alone in the universe?

Well, the “we” in this question can be taken to mean “technologically intelligent life” or
it can be taken to mean “slime”- the single-celled microbial life that represents, and has
always represented, the bulk of living matter on Earth. If the definition of 'we' gets
refined using these categories the answers can change a bit.
There are many answers to this question.
Arguments in favor
People that believe aliens exists say the universe is way too big and it would be the
height of vanity to think humans or Earth are in any way special or significant and the
only planet with life in the entire universe.
There are simply so many other planets, that even if the chances of everything lining up
again in another solar system are very very low, by the time you account for the number
of chances you have, it’s statistically mandatory for there to be other life out there
somewhere. Even if the other life were so rare that you would only expect one
civilization per galaxy, there are billions of galaxies out there - that’s billions of other
civilizations.
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is estimated to have up to 400 billion stars. If each of those
has five planets, we’d have two trillion planets in our galaxy alone. And we know there
are more galaxies in the cosmos than there are planets in the Milky Way. In other words,
there’s a lot of real estate out there. And with so much variety it’s almost impossible to
believe Earth is the only planet with life.

Arguments against
Others think we might be alone, because there’s never been any firm evidence of
extraterrestrial life, and our galaxy is old enough that intelligent extraterrestrial
civilizations should have spread everywhere by now.
The belief in the existence of aliens is fueled by movies, television shows, books and
magazines. These bodies take advantage of the scientific lack of knowledge in this
area, which makes this subject appealing to the public since it is mysterious and build
businesses and publicity around this topic to earn money.
My Opinion
In my opinion, our planet is not the only planet with life in our galaxy. I believe there is
bacterial life or other forms of simple life in other planets more near than we think.
Perhaps, we discover a different definition for life. Maybe, life in other planets exist, but,
as it is different from the life we know, it goes unnoticed.
I also think it’s very likely to exist complex life beyond earth, maybe not in our galaxy,
but, if universe is unlimited, there’s always a chance we are not alone.